People were shook when Natalie Portman turned up at last night’s LA premiere event for Avengers: Endgame. They were shook because… Portman was basically kicked out of the Thor/Marvel franchise years ago. Thor was given other lady friends and foils and there was some kind of reference to how Thor and Portman’s character had broken up. So why did she come to the premiere? I have no idea. I suspect she isn’t in Endgame, but what do I know? I do know that her Dior ensemble was a mixed bag – the skirt is stunning. The top part is blah.

These are maybe the worst pants I’ve ever seen on Chris Hemsworth. Usually, I don’t even notice what he’s wearing, really, but YIKES on this suit. Chris was there with his wife Elsa Pataky, obviously. Elsa was so happy.

Tessa Thompson in Ronald van der Kemp. This dress would have been a disaster on anyone else, but I love it on her. Delightful and strange.

Look what the cat dragged in. Literally, Miley Cyrus looks like something a cat brought into the house. Miley was there to support her brother-in-law Chris Hemsworth, and Liam Hemsworth looked… hot. As always. Miley and Liam both wore Saint Laurent. Look at Miley’s terrible makeup, my lord.

Matt Damon came out to support his friend Chris Hemsworth too. Matt and Luciana and their family basically live down in Australia now and it feels like Chris and Matt are joined at the hip. Remember when John Krasinski and Emily Blunt were joined at the hip with Matt & Lucy? I wonder why they had a couple-breakup.

And finally, Chris Pratt and his fiancee Katherine Schwarzenegger. She looked pretty and wholesome. They make so much sense as a couple.

I had forgotten she had been in them – shows how memorable her performance was. Rumour had it that the only reason she agreed to do the first one was because she wanted to work with Kenneth Branagh who directed.

Am sure she is a nice person but there is something about her that grates, maybe its the pretentiousness that oozes from her.

I don’t dislike her but yeah, she bugs. She’s bugged me ever since she was in Garden State. Her character was annoying and the way Portman played the character was annoying – that awful Jersey accent that went in and out throughout the whole movie was terrible and distracting.

It’s really hard to take her and Thor serious with their “fitness app” and endorsements when so much of her look is courtesy of good surgeons and so much of his is courtesy (allegedly) of good steroids.

They both work out a LOT and they both do really intense workouts. Him in particular. He has also tried out various diets to help him keep muscle high and body fat low. He’s really tight with his trainers and body doubles and people love those friendships and were/are always asking about his regime. His afore-mentioned mates are all involved in the app. If you follow him on Instagram he is constantly posting brutal workouts and he and his closest workout buddies are all a pretty similar size. I actually don’t think the dude uses steroids. Elsa has had some work done in the past, but she works out hard now. I also am not going to give her sh*t for having implants. My sister has had three kids and she folds her boobs into her bras. Kids do so much damage to your boobs! If Elsa wanted to fix that, all power to her. Doesn’t bother me. I think the app is a good fit for them. It’s all very practical and reasonable and I prefer that to crazy fad diets and pretending not to work super hard at having fit bodies.

Natalie seems to get the best Dior stuff. She wanted out after they changed directors on TDW but was saying she wanted back in around the time of Ragnorak and the Captain Marvel news. Thor is supposedly going on hiatus for a while but the fringe characters sometimes pop up in other franchises like William Hurt’s character in Hulk and Captain America, Martin Freeman’s character in Captain America and Black Panther, so maybe they can have her Jane pop up doing science work in a Captain Marvel or something. Or on the Loki show.

She was pissed that they fired Patty Jenkins as director as she wanted a female director and she wanted Patty – who obviously knows how to do a superhero flick well considering her later success with Wonder Woman! Portman had just won her Oscar and pushed hard for Patty. Marvel was not as brave then as it is now. According to Patty she wanted to do a Romeo-and-Juliet-esque space opera that hinged on Thor and Jane being seperate a lot. They fired her and produced the extremely crappy movie we now have which has a forgettable villain and Jane as a damsel in distress. Neither Portman nor Hemsworth were happy with the film. I think she was pretty disillusioned with Marvel after that. And Taika wanted to go in a very different, very silly direction with the third film. More buddy adventure than epic romance.

Molly, I mean Miley, looks fine. She’s a bit of a chameleon because that’s the way she wants it. And she always looks trashy, as someone posted above, because she set that tone herself when she went from Disney kid to ‘adult.’ It’s a hard thing to escape when you go overboard with rebel and sex drama as props for your maturity.

There are rumors that Natalie IS in Endgame. And I think the breakup between her and Marvel was mutual. But that particular franchise has changed a lot post Thor Ragnarok and there was a thawing between the Marvel and Natalie.

She was excited about working with Patty Jenkins, who was originally contracted to direct TDW, but didn’t like it when they changed directors to Alan Taylor and she wanted out then. When the tone changed for Ragnorak and Tessa and Cate seemed to be having so much fun and news of Captain Marvel was surfacing, she wanted back in.

I’m fine with Portman never coming back. I wasn’t a fan of the Jane Foster character, and even then I never understood why Thor would have looked twice at Jane when Kat Dennings (and her glorious bosom) was standing next to her.

That’s right. I remember reading about that. I mean, I’m not going to bash her having convictions about working with a female director. I know she kind of also stated that her character was kind of boring – which she was. Even Hemsworth felt that way about Thor is the first two films and was tired of playing Thor. Which is why they brought in Taika Waititi. Who managed to create interesting female characters. So I don’t blame her for wanting back in.

@Kerfuffle Kat Dennings is pretty but she is no Natalie Portman. Also her character was smart. The problem was that she wasn’t written very well overall. But the same goes for Thor. Both were boring characters in the first two films

Portman looks stunning and elegant… and she was wasted in Marvel movies, honestly. She shines when she can do more dramatic acting, imho.
Miley looks really good. Young and happy. Loving the cluster of silver cuffs.

I also think Miley looks nice. She has too many tattoos, IMO, but what’s done is done. Otherwise I think she looks happy and healthy. She could cut the bangs another quarter inch and not have to tilt her head back like that, tho.

Man, Liam Hemsworth just keeps getting prettier with time. I think he’s going to age very well.

As fun as the third Thor movie was, I’m not going to lie that I was really salty about all three of the supporting female characters being dumped from the first two films. I thought the dynamics between Hemsworth’s Thor and Natalie Portman’s character would’ve been interesting down the road when she starts to age. Yes, Tessa Thompson is a lot of fun as Valkyrie, but it’s REALLY noticeable when you take a cast with three female roles, cut it down to one, and then completely waste Cate Blanchett – CATE F*CKING BLANCHETT – as a villain.

I’m so glad you said that, because it always seemed so odd to me that everyone was praising Ragnarok to the skies for its awesome female characters when it literally swept out all of the franchise’s previous women. Bad enough that you have the misogynistic implication that Jane has no value to the storyline if she’s not Thor’s love interest (though I do get that they may not have had a lot of options if Portman didn’t return) but Sif? Darcy? Both were incredibly popular with the fandom. Hell, in a story all about legacy, we only got hear about Odin’s actions. What did Frigga feel about being queen of a conquering empire? Did she regret it or feel that it was a necessary part of Odin’s kingship? Is she Hela’s mother? What did Hela feel about her – would she have wanted to kill her too or was Frigga close to her? We don’t know, because in a story all about family, the mother didn’t merit a passing mention, though there was time enough to put in an anal joke.

But why would Darcy have been there without Jane? And for that matter, what would Jane’s part in the story have been? We barely see Stellan Skarsgaard, who is supposed to be the expert scientist. Yeah, she could be tagging along in the background with him in theory, but realistically that’s not the role you ask the Oscar winner to do (or pay for her to do).

Also, Sif wasn’t in the movie because the actress was busy working on her other job.

I appreciate that they brought a WOC into the main cast, but the lack of major female characters in a flaw in Taika Watiti’s stories that I’ve noticed for awhile now – and I say that as a huge fan of his work. Nearly all of his films have very densely male casts with limited or mainly supporting female roles. There are likely Reasons (TM) to remove Jane Foster, Darcy, and Sif from the main cast. But that doesn’t change the fact that it was an active choice to mostly replace their presence with male characters, and that’s a shame because it was one of the thing the Thor franchise did better than a lot of the other Marvel films.

But here’s the issue: we need more SIGNIFICANT female characters. Top line, primary characters. That’s different than axing a love interest and 2 other fairly low tier characters. I personally feel like Jane and Sif are relics of a sort – female characters entirely defined by their relationship to the main male character. Without the trajectory of that story, they don’t really work that well as compelling characters. Whereas with Black Panther, I could have watched a story of just Okoye. Perhaps it’s simply the actresses used. But personally, I’m fine with starting fresh and bringing in new primary female characters with their own agency and motivations.

I agree there should be more significant female characters. My point is that axing supporting ones or deuteragonists does not work toward that goal. The more female characters you put in a cast, the more it normalizes their presence in the narrative. Regardless of what Taika Wattiti was going for, he had the opportunity to add more significant and secondary female character, and he didn’t. He got rid of three and replaced it with one. And yes, she has a plot line that doesn’t involve romance, but how much of the story does she actually drive? She has a tragic past, but her alcoholism is used for laughs. She helps the main characters escape and aids in the final fight, but she doesn’t actually do anything particularly pivotal beyond helping them escape. Hell, she doesn’t even get to strike the final blow against Hela, the person responsible for wiping out her kind. Oh, and then she promptly dies in the next few minutes of the following Avengers film.

Taika Watiti could have given us Valkyrie and then also made other characters female. He made the choice NOT to do that. Even flipping the rock alien character to female-coded could have replaced the loss of Darcy’s humorous sidekick role (something women rarely get to have!). He had Hela, one of the most powerful adversaries in the Marvel comics universe, reduced to a nothingburger of a villain who looked very flashy and cool but ultimately posed little threat to anybody beyond a limited cast of characters we cared about. You used Black Panther for comparison, and that is a good one, because it shows you how a thoughtful filmmakers includes women in meaningful roles even when men dominate the spotlight. Thor is surrounded by men outside of Valkyrie. Black Panther has Okoye, Shuri, Nakia, Ramonda – all in addition to male characters like M’Baku, Kilmonger, etc. They manage to be meaningful in the story in ways that you know it would be significantly different without them there.

These decisions don’t exist in a vacuum. It points to a trend to the way male filmmakers don’t seriously think through the way women should be meaningful contributors to the universe as a whole. I don’t think it’s malicious, but it’s definitely a blindspot.

I think it’s pretty much an accepted fact that Marvel has a serious issue with diversity. They have deservedly gotten a lot of flack for how they’ve handled their female heroes (#wheresblackwidow)

But Thor in general is a deeply flawed series. I liked Ragnarok, though it’s clear that Taika Waititi has more of an emphasis on hiring racially diverse actors vs. more women (though considering that he voiced the rock monster himself, I don’t know that he would have handed it off to anyone else, man or woman). The first 2 movies just aren’t good period. Both Jane and Sif aren’t great characters (Sif would have been better if they’d found someone even remotely dynamic to play her) but that’s not a shock to me with Branaugh directing. Personally, I’d rather see Marvel leave behind some of the weakest characters that are there solely as accessories to their heroes (see also Pepper Potts and, though it pains me to say this, Rachel McAdams’ character) and bring in newer characters with more agency, rather than try to force this with the current characters that don’t fit well in the series otherwise. FWIW I liked both Hela and Valkyrie (I thought Valkyrie was one of the best parts of the movie).

And I will point out, part of the issue with Portman is that she is still an Oscar winning star, so while in theory she could pop up here and there, it doesn’t make sense that she would be a peripheral character with just a line or two at a time (a la Cobie Smulders).

I think she’s superficially a really great villain (I mean…it’s Cate f*cking Blanchett), but when you look at what she actually does in the film, it’s a waste. On the second watch, it was really hard for me to ignore that the entire middle part of the movie is her stuck doing nothing and just generally menacing the population. Where’s the overarching threat from that? Loki managed to do more damage in two films than she did in one, and she’s supposed to be the Big Bad who stood by Odin’s side and tore down the galaxy. Marvel would’ve been wiser to utilize her more efficiently and maintain her role from the comics where she was in league with Thanos. THEN she becomes something to be greatly feared.

(And in fact, the next Avengers film highlights the Villain Problem with her – she wipes out quite a bit of Asgard’s population, but it’s actually Thanos who does the worst work of it, eh? He’s the scary one.)

I enjoyed Hela as a villain. But I thought that they learned from using Loki twice – Loki took over the Thor franchise for a period of time, and Hemsworth was pretty clearly unhappy about that. And I don’t think we would have seen Blanchett sign on for multiple movies.

Also, I think a huge part of Marvel’s villain problem is that the hero’s are all such important IP, that they choose not to have villains compete. Perhaps it’s to appease their stars. Perhaps it’s because they don’t want the movies to become retreads. Who knows.

The problem with Blanchette’s Hela was that she was off by herself for most of the movie with nothing but expository dialogue with Karl Urban’s Scurge. She killed off 2 of the Warriors 3, then had a brief scene with Hogan , then lots of exposition with Skurge. Otherwise, she had one introductory scene with Loki and Thor, no scenes with Heimdahl, or Hulk/Bruce Banner. No dialogue with Valkyrie. Two fight scenes with Thor. It would have been fun to watch her chew more scenery with the rest of the cast.

James Corden did a live re-enactment of Ragnorak with the cast and Cate was hilarious because she got to interact more.

Lightpurple – Yes, you nailed it. It’s the isolation of her character that I feel wastes her. There’s no time to develop any real fear of her as a villain because we just don’t get a sense of her being worth our fear. She’s handled in such a way that you know she’ll be gone by the end, with no real influence on the heroes, and that’s just part and partial with Marvel’s whole problem with their villains. We have to like them enough as villains to want to see them defeated. And it’s such a shame because Hela just looks SO COOL and Cate Blanchett clearly had SO MUCH she could’ve done with the character, and we’re wasting time on jokes like “Devil’s anus.”

I wonder if part of the issue is that Hemsworth has worked to reclaim this as Thor’s story. After Loki walked away with the series for a while, it was VERY clear that they worked to bring it back to Hemsworth being the clear star. Just look at how it was promoted – all Taika and Hemsworth.

I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that the only other recent Marvel villain that has really stood out was Killmonger – MBJ has such a solid relationship with Ryan Coogler, and it’s one of the few stories where Marvel has been willing to make a villain essentially a co-lead.

Veronica, Hela easily and singlehandedly wipes out the entire Asgardian army plus the warriors. One of the most fearsome armies in the universe. Prior to that she had wiped out the entire Valkyrie force bar one. Thor and Loki were unable to defeat her. Thanos wasn’t worse than her, he – with the help of his powerful minions – wiped out half of a bunch of civilian refugees. The army was already dead thanks to Hela. Loki would never have been able to wipe out the entire Asgardian army or the Valkyrie. He failed to cause anywhere near the same amount of damage with significant help from others and against much weaker human opponents.

It looks like everyone involved in the Extended Universe is showing up for this premiere, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Jane pop up in the movie (especially knowing how the storyline worked in the comic books as a template for potential plot).

I also wouldn’t be shocked to see Hemsworth pop up as Thor again, but in the right circumstance. His work outside Marvel hasn’t exactly hit the way he hoped.

Don’t think the Krasinski-Blunt-Damon’s “broke up” at all. They were tight through awards season.

The Krasinskis and Damons are far from broke up – Matt and Luciana just bought an entire floor of a loft building in Brooklyn just three floors up from Emily and John. Their families are practically living on top of one another there.